00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Fantastic
00:06to speak again to Paul Unwin. Now, Paul, you have a truly fascinating, zeitgeisty play
00:12coming up at Chichester Westfield Theatre and the Minerva Theatre, The Promise, a play
00:16about the landmark post-war Labour government who embraced a moment of incredible change
00:23and created the NHS. Goodness, it's perfect timing to do this, isn't it?
00:29Well, it's all actually down to the wonderful new Artistic Director of the Festival Theatre,
00:33Justin Alderbert, who came to see a workshop and they supported a workshop reading of the
00:41play months ago, just under a year ago, and he phoned from the train going back to Chichester
00:51saying we must put this play on. I think we both knew that there was going to be a general
00:57election at some point this year, but when then we discovered that the play was going
01:03to open, I think a week after this general election, it felt like, oh my, you know, I
01:12suddenly felt like I was the most zeitgeisty writer in Britain. And the play really is
01:17about a Labour government taking on a country that is in disarray in all kinds of ways,
01:24has huge debts, has big problems with Europe, has problems with America, has changed its
01:31international standing. I mean, fair enough, Britain has not now been bombed and hasn't
01:37got a million young men and women serving overseas in dangerous war zones, but the echoes
01:43and the similarities of the problems of taking over, of trying to build a vision of what Britain
01:52could become under pressure, after what could be a landslide election. We're talking just
01:59before the election, so I don't say anything that's too...
02:03Absolutely. But you were saying one of the really, truly fascinating things as you were
02:07discovering, the personalities, the people who made it happen. And these were clashing
02:13personalities to an extent, weren't they?
02:16When I first set out to do a play about the birth of the NHS, I had no idea. When I
02:21started to do research and I met these extraordinary characters, I mean, the key moment for me
02:26was this photograph of the Attlee cabinet. And right on the end of it was this tiny,
02:32the only woman in the picture. And then I found out who she was. It's this Labour socialist
02:39MP who became a cabinet minister, was the head of education, the minister of education in
02:44Attlee's government, Ellen Wilkinson. And I dug into her story and found this
02:51firebrand of a personality with complex personal life, with complex personal history,
03:00who then fought, pushed the Labour government to run for election in 1945. And then around
03:09there are these other characters. Of course, there's the famous Nye Bevan, but then there's
03:12Ernie Bevin, who this orphaned at seven was working in the docks in Bristol at 14, who
03:20went on to form the TGWU, was the one European politician Stalin famously said, I've met my
03:28match with this, you know, this bear of a man. Then there's Clement Attlee, then there's
03:33Violet Attlee, his wife, who drove him through the 1945 election. They drove around the country
03:38in this Morris or Austin Morris, I'm sure someone's saying that a bit wrong, tiny car she
03:43drove, apparently she was a terrible driver, but she insisted on being with Clem wherever he
03:48went. Clem Attlee, who Churchill actually said, a taxi pulled up in Downing Street and no one
03:54got out. An empty taxi pulled up in Downing Street, and no one got out. Oh, Clement Attlee
03:58got out. He was so uncharismatic. And yet, these people created, to my mind, the Britain
04:07that we have all grown up with. And their passion, their commitment, I hope in the play,
04:14their sense of humour. We are three and a half weeks into the rehearsal. It's not a dry play.
04:24It's funny. They're very rude to each other. And I hope it's very moving. It's about the
04:32human capacity to go, we can make things better.
04:35Absolutely. And of course, we should always hold the NHS in mind. But what are you wanting
04:40us to think about the NHS, having seen this? Is it a plea to protect it? What does it say?
04:47Of course, it's a plea to protect. It's a plea to recognise how complex, even at its birth,
04:54it was. It's more than a noble ambition. And it has a degree of utopianism about it.
05:05It's a complex social entity. But when I reflect on what it now means to be British,
05:12what it now means to be proud of the country I live in, I would say the NHS is high, if not
05:20the top of that list. This notion that anything can happen to you and there will be free at the
05:29point of need care for you seems to me to be very, very profoundly about who we are.
05:37And I mean, you know, I co-created the BBC series Casualty many, many years ago, on the back of
05:45having been terribly ill. And really what happened there was I was ill and I had had a bad accident,
05:51lay in a hospital going, this is extraordinary. I'm surrounded by people at all sorts of different
05:56stages of their life. I was in hospital for too long, so I had too much time to think.
05:59But you know, I saw people die. I saw people coming injured. I saw people walk out fixed.
06:04But what I always saw was nurses and a medical system that never asked of anything of us.
06:12We were cared for. We were treated. Our bums were washed. Our noses were blown. And we were
06:19helped through this traumatic personal experience. And they're all illnesses, personal and intimate.
06:26And I came up with, I had this sense that it felt like all of society, by it being free,
06:33was rooting for your getting better. And that then, in my mind, became a wonderful example
06:40of what it is to be to be British. We do care for each other. We should care for each other.
06:45Absolute best in the country, isn't it?
06:47And when we don't, we go foully wrong. When we recognise our ability to care for each other,
06:59something happens. And it's so interesting talking about a town like Chichester. I mean,
07:03I happened to get married in Chichester. And seeing that theatre flourish and knowing
07:11a bit about a local theatre like that is opening its doors to as broad a community as possible.
07:22And like your newspaper, a local newspaper speaking locally is the stuff of us all
07:29telling each other our stories, caring for each other, building something more than the sum of
07:35our parts. And that, I think, is what the NHS is. It's more than the sum of our parts. Actually,
07:39yeah, it's slightly, it's a lot else.
07:43Well, as the father of two NHS doctors, I absolutely concur. Paul, it's a really fascinating
07:50play, but also a really, really important one. Really lovely to speak to you again. Thank you.
07:56And you, Phil. Thank you.
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